Russian aircraft crashes after takeoff from Moscow

President Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said: "The president has instructed the government to set up a special commission over the plane crash in the Moscow region".

"The search and rescue operation in underway".

Russian Federation has experienced record snowfall in recent weeks and investigators said they would not rule out poor weather as a possible cause of the disaster. The country's transportation minister said there were no survivors.

Fragments of the Antonov AN-148 regional jet were found near the village of Stepanovskoye, a spokesman with Russia's Emergencies Ministry told TASS.

"According to preliminary information, nobody survived", the Kremlin said in a statement.

All those on board are thought to have died, officials told Russian state media.

The Saratov Airlines jet vanished minutes after take-off and crashed near the village of Argunovo, about 80km (50 miles) south-east of Moscow.

Orsk Mayor Andrei Odintsov said the local governor had declared Monday a day of mourning throughout the region.

In a massive aircraft accident, a Russian domestic passenger plane crashed on the outskirts of the Russian capital on Sunday after taking off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Russian media reported. According to media reports from Russian Federation, everyone on the plane died.

Shocked witnesses reportedly described seeing the plane "breaking in the sky" before it came crashing down in flames after taking off from the Domodedovo Airport.

Russia's air transport agency said the airport lost radio contact with the aircraft several minutes after takeoff.

The aircraft was headed for Orsk, which lies near the Russia-Kazakhstan border, over 1,050 miles (1,700 kilometers) farther to the southeast.